


Amateurs at War

by wolfsan11



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, BOM!Keith, Canon Compliant, M/M, S4 Ep1 Coda, Season 4 Spoilers, someone help this boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 04:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12381057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfsan11/pseuds/wolfsan11
Summary: She had come for him, all three times. She’d stuck by his judgement, always. What if . . .“Red? . . . Red?”-Keith's quite literally at the end of his rope as he extinguishes his final hopes of being saved.





	Amateurs at War

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lycoria for the simple phrase that spawned this - "Red? Red?"

Numbness. That’s what he registers first.

There’s the ringing in his ears, the shrapnel slices across his body making themselves known, the tight press of hurt in his throat. But numbness is what’s most apparent. Debris litters the void around him. He’d been so close to joining it, fragments of himself laid scattered out for no one to find. Regris had become a part of it already, stupid bastard.

Keith puts a hand to the hole in his suit and wonders if anyone will come for him.

This is a familiar exercise: The stars shine cruelly, beauty lost in their damning light. Space swirls around him, muted, empty black. Velocity carries him away until he tethers himself to a chunk of scrap metal. How many times is this now? Four?

His soul is singing empty, but he finds it in himself to look around and hope. She had come for him, all three times. She’d stuck by his judgement, always. What if . . .

“Red? . . . Red?”

He calls out, his voice muffled by the persisting tinnitus in his head, sounds further swallowed by the ocean that is space. It’s habit, one of many he has yet to beat out. There was no need for it when he could still pluck at their bond and hear her answering roar, but everything had shifted after losing Shiro and this is habit and fear co-existing. He’s not under any illusions when it comes to the Black Lion—pragmatic, militaristic, cut-your-losses Black, all about doing the right thing—but Red. Red had been his. Red had always come for him. She’d been _his._

Cold presses against his ribs, expanding. He coughs, tightens his hand around the break in his suit for all the good it will do. Already, the air is running thin and he has to adjust himself, slow his inhales to shallow breaths. He waits for her, for the telling glint of deep scarlet and the swell in their bond.

Nothing.

Hope is fast dwindling—she’s too far, she’s not connected to him anymore, she’s not his anymore, not now—and he’s running out of time. Still, he tries again.

“Red. Are you there? . . . Please. Please, I need you. Please. Red—” He cuts himself off, shame blooming as the hole in his chest where her flames had always flickered yawns wide and empty. There’s nothing there; hadn’t been, in a long time now.

His eyes follow the thin line of rope, up and up to the handle of his knife, further on to where the blade is lodged deep into metal. The Marmora emblem winks at him, purple in his sight, the only thing keeping him from falling forever into the void. There’s some symbolism in that, he knows. Shiro would appreciate it. He’d wear that soft smile as he pointed it out, grim but gentle as he—

No. Never mind that.

Paladin is a title he’s shrugged off, and the only hand extended to help him out is his own. He’s a Blade now.

Just like that, Keith’s done with it, slamming a jar down on the insect of hope that’s invaded his thoughts. He can take it out later, an incisive emotional surgery he desperately needs. He tugs hard at the rope tether, pulling himself in, launches himself towards the ship they’d arrived in that’s idling just off in the distance. That it’s still there means Kolivan hasn’t found his way to it yet. . . or that he’s still preparing to leave.

Sounds are filtering through now, his grunts of effort, the knocks against his body as he crashes into wreckage from the Galra ship—and he wonders how the Empire had known, who had told them, why they were left so unprepared for the ambush—but loudest of all is the alarming hiss of air escaping his suit.

He holds his breath the last hundred meters, lungs aching for life, heart aching for understanding, chest aching for what’s become of him.

Somehow, Keith makes it through before the doors slide shut. He slams to the floor, an ungraceful landing, rolling across cool metal and slowing to a stop. Kolivan stands over him, a shadow of disappointment and anger, but Keith’s hardly phased. There’s quite a ways to go in perfecting that stare before it would get under his skin the way Shiro’s did.

He stands, grits his teeth against the sour loss of Regris and so much more. Tries not to reminisce on afternoons training together, the exchanged fist bumps after a successful mission, the simplicity of sitting in quiet companionship. Those images layer out over more familiar ones but he shuts them out, set only on the present.

‘It was an honour’, he thinks, far too little, far too late, just like it had been for Thace and Ulaz and his old team and every other person lost or close to lost in the act of saving his pathetic life.

Regris deserves better than the laments of the Blade who could not save him but Keith has nothing else to offer and Kolivan has already moved on, standing stiff at the helm to direct them back to the base. Regris deserves better and, just a few months back, Keith would have thought the same of himself. But he’s seen much and learned plenty since then. He’s changed.

This is the way of the Blade and the way of the Galra: Victory or death. Knowledge or death. Mission over the individual, every time.

Maybe Red had learned that lesson too.

**Author's Note:**

> So who else was gutted when Red didn't break the parade formation to go save her son? ;_________;


End file.
